This blog contains reviews of concerts (classical for the most part) I attend. I have subscriptions to various organizations, and have opportunities to go to other concerts as well. These reviews are meant to capture how I react to the performances rather than professional reviews. I also record some of the information I read from various sources, such as the concerts' program notes, and may not always attribute the sources properly.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Metropolitan Opera – Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina. March 13, 2012.

Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center – Balcony (Seat
A117, $92.50).

Story. The setting
of the story is Russia in the late 1600s. Interweaved into the story are three main
characters: Ivan Khovansky and the streltskys, Dosifei and the Old Believers,
and Murfa. After supporting the installation of Ivan and Peter as joint rulers,
Ivan Khovansky and his son Andrei lead the streltskys to rebel against
them. Towards the end of the story, Ivan
Khovansky is killed inside his residence, but the streltskys are pardoned by
Tsar Peter. During the same time period,
the Old Believers are being persecuted, and the Imperial Court has decreed they
be killed. Instead of surrendering,
their leader Dosifei leads them to a mass suicide by setting fire to
themselves. Murfa, an Old Believer, has
some mythical powers that allow her to predict the future, including that of Prince Vasily
Golitsyn, lover of the Tsars sister Sophia.
Golitsyn tries to drown Murfa after she gives him a horrific reading,
but to no avail. Murfa is in love with
Andrei Khovansky and eventually gets him to commit suicide with her and the
other Old Believers.

The Program Front Page also tells us that the Opera’s
libretto was written by the composer, the orchestration by Dmitri Shostakovich,
and the final scene by Igor Stravinsky.
Mussorgsky died at age 42 partly due to his alcoholism, and he left
behind an incomplete manuscript that was for the most part unorchestrated.

The story is based on the real-life character Prince Ivan
Khovansky, with the term “Khovanschchina” meaning Khovansky Intrigue, referring
to his plan to stage a coup. The
historical accounts are complicated enough, and on top of that was Mussorgsky’s
effort to weave different stories together, resulting in a rather unwieldy
plot. If I had just copied the synopsis
found in the Program Notes over onto this blog, I don’t think things would have
been that much clearer. In any case,
Anne’s take of the Program Notes is that Russia itself is the protagonist, and
the opera shows how history claims its victims who are powerless to stop its
inexorable march. And, as far
as I could tell, there is no answer to the question of “who won?” To echo what the Program Notes says about the
chorus, instead of the “one voice” we get from the chorus in Nabucco
(signifying the struggle of the Hebrew people,) here we have different groups
with different objectives: the strelskys, the Muscovites, the Old Believers all
seemed to want different things. A
storyline that complicated may work in the hands of a master like
Tolstoy, but I am not sure Mussorgsky could ever pull it off. And, in the case of Tolstoy’s War and Peace,
Prokofiev in turning the epic into an opera had to simplify it drastically.

The overture is quite unexpected, sounding tonal and
pleasant. But my hope that this would be
a performance with memorable tunes was soon quashed: the music quickly
degenerated into a fragmented, dissonant sound used by Mussorgsky to represent
the chaos and darkness of the story.
Sprinkled throughout the opera were the many attempts that tried to go “positive,”
these were quickly overwhelmed by the dark mood permeating throughout. One exception, of course, was the Persian
dance in Scene 4, but Ivan Khovansky was shot at the end of the scene. All this should work very well in theory, and
it evidently did work for many people, if what I overheard what they said
during the intermissions was any indication.
For Anne and I, alas, that simply meant we had to fight to stay awake. You get some idea of what is going on, but
there are many gaps that leave one scratching one’s head. For instance, I just realized that Ivan
Khovansky was killed on order of the tsars’ sister Sophia, with whom he was
aligned for a while. During the performance, I had no idea who did it; and I still don't understand why.

The conductor and most soloists are from Russia, Georgia,
and Ukraine. So I assume the Russian was
perfect, of course the only word I can make out is “Nyet.” We had heard Ildar Abdrazakov several times,
including the roles of Henry VIII in Anna Bolena and Attila. And we had seen Petrenko conduct a couple of
times before also. In any case, the
singing was uniformly good. I especially
enjoyed Olga Borodina as Marfa. I am
still a bit puzzled by how sometimes the sound would come across really loud at
certain locations on the stage. For
tonight it was on the right close to a balcony-like structure.

The set used was designed in 1985. While it still works, as it should, it is
interesting that the Met didn’t try to refresh it for this run. Perhaps they ran out of money after spending
a great fortune on the Ring Cycle? One
would expect to see the Onion Domes of the Krelim if the Scene is the Red
Square, and one would be disappointed.
What we got was a close up view of the columns. The immolation scene leaves a lot to the
audience’s imagination. There is this
pile of wood in the middle, surrounded by a hundred or so Old Believers holding
candles in their hands. A bright light
and smoke would tell the audience that the pile is on fire. Basically the same concept as the scene in
Gotterdammerung, but not to as good an effect.
They might just as well learn something from the new Ring production.

The concert started at 7 pm and didn’t end until about
11:25 pm. With two intermissions and
several scene changes I would guess the opera itself was a bit over three
hours. I suspect unless this is turned
into something on the scale of the Ring, lengthening the opera by an hour or so
won’t help with clarifying what is happening, given how discombobulated the
story is at this stage.

There are some moments that someone fully engaged with
this opera will find poignant, but I don’t really get them. I would have enjoyed the opera a lot more if
it is not trying to say so many things at the same time.

The New York Times reviewer loved the opera, calling it “one
of the best things the Met has done this season.” Sounds very much like the people sitting around
me, including the lady sitting next to me who seemed clueless most of the time
(from the questions she was asking her companion) but ended up applauding very
enthusiastically. And now that I have
read the review, another person was just quoting what she read! I do like the reviewer’s description of the
Persian dance: “bland new choreography.”

The reviewer Zachary Wolfe also says Gotterdammerung left him "cold," but he didn't write the review of that opera for the Times, Tommasini did. I guess it is not surprising that different people get different takes from the same performance.